Aerospace & Defense 2014

Intelligence For An Essential Industry >>

Renewal of the world's airliner fleets with more fuel-efficient aircraft is gathering pace, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is gaining traction in the international market, unmanned aircraft are making progress toward civil applications, commercial spaceflight is becoming a reality. It has been an eventful 2013; what does 2014 have in store?

Aviation Week's Aerospace & Defense 2014 Sourcebook takes a look ahead at 2014 and beyond, to see how the booming commercial markets, challenging defense budgets and continuing technology innovations will shape the industry. We also look at developments in business aircraft, rotorcraft, engines, spacecraft and demand for maintenance, repair and overhaul.

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Defense Technologies to Watch

Big Picture Cockpit
Steam gauges gave way to display screens in fighters beginning in the late 1970s, but it has taken decades for technology to enable the vision of a "big picture" cockpit.

Passive Precision Targeting
Proliferation of advanced jammers that can intercept and mimic radar signals rapidly and accurately is spurring development of passive targeting technologies.

GPS-Denied Navigation
Now a strength , aerospace 's reliance on GPS for guidance and navigation could become a vulnerability with the growing threat of jamming and spoofing of the satellite signals.

Manned/Unmanned Teaming
The ability to display unmanned-aircraft sensor video in helicopter cockpits has proved pivotal in two wars , and takes another step in 2014 when the U.S. Army deploys to Afghanistan new Boeing AH-64E Apaches with the ability to control its General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAVs.

Variable-Cycle Engines
Burning less fuel and keeping things cool are the drivers behind development of a new type of combat-aircraft engine that can vary its bypass-ratio between fuel-efficient subsonic loiter and high-thrust supersonic dash.

Wake-Vortex Surfing
Geese do it, so why not aircraft ? The U.S. Air Force is looking at formation flying to reduce the fuel burned by its airlifter fleet.

Disaggregated Satellites
The military is wedded to large, expensive satellites but talks about “ disaggregating ” their capabilities to smaller, more numerous spacecraft to reduce costs.

Reusable Smallsat Launcher
A bold venture to develop a commercial reusable launch system to orbit 250-kg payloads for $11 million will get its first test in 2014, when Swiss Space Systems ( S3 ) plans to fly a mockup suborbital shuttle.